"I know what it means; but you never will until you can ride across Fire
Mesa with your heart aching because it's so beautiful."
"I don't see where in the world you get the idea that I don't see the beauty in things!" protested Douglas. "I can't gush like a girl and quote poetry, but this sure is a lovely country to me. And I want my children's children to have this valley and hold it till the very bones of their bodies are made out of the dust of Lost Chief. That's how I feel about these old hills. More than that, I can see how a marriage here in Lost Chief might be a life-long dream of beauty."
Judith looked at Douglas with astonishment not unmixed with admiration.
But she returned sturdily to her own line of defense.
"Doug, do you see any beautiful marriage around here?"
Douglas stared at her tragically, then answered with a groan: "No, I don't! But," with new firmness, "that's not saying I don't firmly believe I couldn't make marriage a lovely thing."
"Why, do you think you are cleverer than anybody else?"
"Not clever, but—but—" Douglas paused, powerless to tell Judith of that something within him that suddenly told him that his fate was to bring to Lost Chief the thing of the soul it never had had. How or what this was to be, he did not know.
After a time, he said softly, "Judith, were you ever in love?"
Judith returned his look with a curiously impersonal glance. "I'm not sure," she answered slowly. "Not what Inez calls love, that's sure."
"Isn't there any other woman in Lost Chief that could give you ideas except Inez?" asked Douglas impatiently.